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Symphonic Form – Sibelius vs Mahler
The following is an extract from New Yorker music critic Alex Ross’s new book The Rest Is Noise, a guide to twentieth century classical music. It provides some insight into the differences between Sibelius and Mahler, and their approach to symphonic composition. In 1904, Sibelius tried to escape the embarrassments of his Helsinki life style […]
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Mahler Graffiti Artist Strikes Toronto
It seems that Mahler’s name lives on in unusual ways. Playbill Arts reports that someone has been spray-painting the name ‘Gustav Mahler’ on various walls and bridges in the Corktown area of Toronto: PlaybillArts: News: Toronto Sees Spate of Mahler Graffiti (via Alex Ross’s blog The Rest is Noise).
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Mahler Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’ – Best Recorded Version
Mahler’s second symphony requires immense attention to detail to be successfully performed. This is brilliantly observed in one of my favourite classical recordings of all time, which remains a big hit with classical music critics: Mahler Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’, Simon Rattle (conductor), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, with Janet Baker (Mezzo Soprano) and Arleen […]
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RSS Feed
You can subscribe to the Culture Club blog using the following feed: http://thecultureclub.wordpress.com/wp-rss.php If you’re new to RSS, the following links provide excellent introductions to the subject, along with guides on how to get started: The Beginner’s Guide to RSS Video: RSS in Plain English The BBC Guide to RSS News Feeds
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The Culture Club: Theme for October-December 2007
For our next session we’re taking spirituality as our theme, with a leaning towards German artists. The works we will be absorbing and discussing between now and the next meeting on the 13th December 2007 are as follows: Siddharta – Hermann Hesse (Novel) The Duino Elegies – Rainer Maria Rilke (Poetry) Wings of Desire – […]
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Analysis: Second Glance at a Jaguar by Ted Hughes
Much of Ted Hughes’s early animal poetry is an attempt to capture the ‘Real’ in nature. Here he is not concerned with the effect of nature on man’s sensibilities but with ‘the thing itself’. One of his most successful poems in this respect is Second Glance at a Jaguar. The poem literally gets under the […]
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Audio: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, A Marriage
Diane Middlebrook, the author of Hughes and Plath: A Marriage, discusses her book, and the influence that these two great poets had on each other and their work, in a podcast produced by Stanford University. It’s well worth listening to for an understanding of the context of their poetry, as well as providing an insight […]
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Video: A Tribute to the Poet Ted Hughes
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18DdJO9Lg-s
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Analysis: The Hawk In The Rain by Ted Hughes
As we came to approach the poetry of Ted Hughes for this month’s Culture Club, I wondered what it was that had led me to neglect him. Like a lot of people, I first encountered Hughes at school, but he’s not a poet that I’ve ever felt compelled to go back to since those early […]
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Analysis: Sandpiper by Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop’s Sandpiper is concerned with the particular. Through a controlled tightening of focus, like the turn of the lens on a telescope, Bishop draws our attention ever closer to the minutiae of existence, of which the bird is solely conscious: from the water glazing over its feet, to its toes, to the spaces between […]